You know the expression, “a world of hurt.” That is where we live, often surrounded by suffering and pain, deprivation and injustice. And thanks to global communications and interconnectedness, we are confronted daily by the immediacy of suffering the world over, images of refugees and starving children as urgent to us as homeless persons in our communities. Don’t we have to pass some of it by?
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.”
The priest and the Levite are the bad guys of the story (after the robbers, of course…). We expect more of religious leaders than we do of ordinary folk, which makes their indifference to the man’s suffering even worse in our eyes. We might spare them some sympathy: as religious leaders dedicated to temple worship, they each had a duty to maintain ritual purity, which would have been violated by coming into contact with a dead person. For all they knew, this man was beyond help. And perhaps they had schedules to keep and tasks to maintain, which is often what keeps us from stopping and responding.
What is radical in Jesus’ story is who he places in the role of hero: a Samaritan, the wrong sort of person from the perspective of Jesus’ Jewish listeners. And why does the Samaritan man stop to check out the situation? He was moved with pity.
We live our days in the tension of competing claims, conflicting responses. Our compassion may often be stirred, yet we are also caught by the often delightful demands of work and family, and the need to maintain some balance in life. People who stop and give all the time often burn out or cheat their families of their best selves. So when do we stop, and when do we walk on?
We can learn to notice when we are moved by compassion or a desire to help. When you feel these things in response to a person in need, offer that reaction in prayer and ask God: "Are you inviting me to offer myself in this situation? Are you up to something that you’d like my participation in? What shall I offer? What shall I hold back?" Make it a prayer conversation, not a decision you make alone.
If we approach this parable only from the standpoint of ethics, only as the ones who might help, forgetting that we are also ones who'd spiritually been left for dead, for whom Jesus gave everything to reclaim, restore and renew us to wholeness, we miss the point. When we remember how much we have received, it helps us know when and how to give.
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